Playing With the Boys

Why Separate is Not Equal in Sports

Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pappano

§ Unique and provocative topic: there is no other book on the market that challenges the current sex-segregated policies in sports, and the argument put forward by McDonagh and Pappano will definitely inspire debate

§ Engaging, fluid narrative: Pappano's journalistic experience is evident throughout the book; it contains gracefully written, engaging accounts of athletic girls and women who have challenged gender barriers in high school football, college basketball, and track and field.

Playing With the Boys

Why Separate is Not Equal in Sports

Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pappano

Description

Athletic contests help define what we mean in America by "success." By keeping women from "playing with the boys" on the false assumption that they are inherently inferior, society relegates them to second-class citizens. In this forcefully argued book, Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pappano show in vivid detail how women have been unfairly excluded from participating in sports on an equal footing with men. Using dozens of powerful examples--girls and women breaking through in football, ice hockey, wrestling, and baseball, to name just a few--the authors show that sex differences are not sufficient to warrant exclusion in most sports, that success entails more than brute strength, and that sex segregation in sports does not simply reflect sex differences, but actively
constructs and reinforces stereotypes about sex differences. For instance, women's bodies give them a physiological advantage in endurance sports, yet many Olympic events have shorter races for women than men, thereby camouflaging rather than revealing women's strengths.

Playing With the Boys

Why Separate is Not Equal in Sports

Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pappano

Author Information

Eileen McDonagh is Professor of Political Science at Northeastern University and Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. She is the author of Breaking the Abortion Deadlock and The Motherless State.

Laura Pappano is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, Good Housekeeping, and The Washington Post. She is the author of The Connection Gap and is currently a writer-in-residence at the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College.

Playing With the Boys

Why Separate is Not Equal in Sports

Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pappano

Reviews and Awards

2008 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

"Playing with the Boys dismantles the common assumption that women must be inferior to men when it comes to sports. McDonagh and Pappano impressively show how this deep stereotype has no grounds and why it's so important we get rid of it."--Donna Brazile, author of Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics

"This is one of those rare gems of a book that makes you entirely reassess what you thought you knew. Provocative, absorbing and meticulously argued, Playing with the Boys questions the received wisdom about Title IX and women's sports from the most unexpected perspective. Read the book."--Mary Fainsod Katzenstein, Stephen and Evalyn Milman Professor of American Studies, Cornell University and author of Faithful and Fearless: Moving Feminist Protest inside the Church and Military

"McDonagh and Pappano hit a home-run! This book shows that coerced sex segregation in sports does not benefit women, and in fact holds back women who are fully capable of competing with men--and that flies in the face of U.S. ideals of equality. Readers will never think of Title IX in the same way again."--Kim Gandy, President, National Organization for Women (NOW)

"A strong case history about the inequalities that existed for female athletes not only in the 1800s and 1900s, but also today."--The Chicago Sun-Times